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I have faced a problem with my writing which I could really do with some clarification on. My question applies to both British and American English (which is fairly standard on the internet).

Needless to say the context is a website whereby I allow the user to enter a sexuality and it is the English of choosing the sexuality option which is confusing me.

I see many people no longer mention "homosexual" and when you do a Google search for the right term ("homosexual or lesbian") you actually find that many seem to avoid the use of "homosexual" and even have undue prejudice towards it ( http://www.care2.com/causes/gay-and-lesbian-or-homosexual-does-it-matter.html ). Likewise I have noticed that many charities do not include "homosexual" in their material but instead "Gay and Lesbian" (LGBT). Added on top to this, I notice many websites no longer use "homosexual" either.

So is it better in modern English, taking cultural aspects into consideration, that "gay and lesbian" should be used rather than "homosexual"?

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    Why in the world would you ask such a thing? I smell a classic X/Y problem here: you want X and think Y is how to get to X and therefore ask for Y, which hides the real problem domain from those who could help you all because of a false analysis that Y is how you get to X when in fact Y is a batty solution to the X problem. You haven't told us X, only your probably-wrong Y. Tell us X: What are you actually trying to learn?
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Feb 15, 2015 at 22:28
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    I think this is a valid ELU question, but boy did you step in a minefield when you clarified with a comment: "Which is more correct to use in the English language?" English doesn't care if you use gay and lesbian, homosexual or a rash of other derogatory terms – all of them could be "correct" under the grammatical rules of English. On the other hand, if you're asking about "most polite," or "most unlikely to offend," I think that could be a valid word choice and usage question.
    – J.R.
    Commented Feb 15, 2015 at 23:51
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    @Sam - grammatically correct English and politically correct English are hardly overlapping sets :^)
    – J.R.
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 0:00
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    If, as you suggest, this is something like a registration form, simply provide every option you can think of (in a pull-down or whatever), and maybe even a write-in for others. Let the person filling it out choose what term they prefer. This is a common solution to the similar problem of selecting a racial designation.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 3:00
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    From the bit that Mari-Lou cited from your link: There’s also an inherently androcentric core to the word “homosexual”. I wonder what on earth he is talking about here—there is no ‘androcentric core’ in the word homosexual. Perhaps he's one of those who thinks the homo- bit is from Latin homō ‘man’ (which is doubly false: homō means ‘human being’, not ‘male’, and the prefix homo- is Greek, not Latin, and means ‘same’).
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 9:57

3 Answers 3

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Does a dog have the Buddha nature?

Sexual orientation

Your question reads, "...the context is a website whereby I allow the user to enter a sexuality." Part of your confusion starts here: using precise language to define your problem will help you find a solution. "Sexuality" is not precise enough. On your website, you are allowing users to enter their sexual orientation: that is the precise term you need.

By being more precise, we see that the information that you are allowing the users to enter is emphatically not the labels that the users apply to themselves (such as homosexual, gay, or lesbian). Rather, you are allowing the users to enter the gender of people to whom the users are sexually oriented.

What does LGBT mean?

Your question makes a passing reference to LGBT but only mentions "Gay and Lesbian." "LGBT is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender." (Wikipedia, emphasis added.) People who label themselves as gay or lesbian almost always recognize at least a few other labels with equal validity to gay or lesbian. The extremely-common initialism, LGBT, demonstrates that in addition to gay and lesbian, many people describe their sexual orientation as bisexual or some other label.

Therefore, your basic question is a false dichotomy: you do not need to choose between “Homosexual” or “Gay and Lesbian” because there are clearly many other options than those three terms. Furthermore, "Homosexual" and presumably "Heterosexual" as the two choices for your users do not include people who label themselves as bisexual, so "Homosexual" is not broad enough. Your proposed alternative of "Gay and Lesbian" presumably presented with a choice such as "Straight" is also under-inclusive.

For your website, neither of the options you have presented are adequate.

What is gender?

The issue, however, is even more complicated than attempting to create a fully-inclusive list of labels for sexual orientation. Transgender (the "T" in LGBT) is not a sexual orientation: it describes a person's gender identity. The overwhelming majority of people only think of gender as male or female. This black-and-white perspective of gender is often called something like a "binary gender" model.

Some people, however, do not cleanly fit into these two gender definitions. Easy, non-controversial examples that defy binary-gender labels: some people have male and female sexual organs; some people are genetically female (two X-chromosomes), but have the secondary sexual characteristics of a male (sexual organs, for example); and some people have two X-chromosomes and a Y-chromosome, which, genetically, is not exactly male nor female, and the person could develop the secondary sexual characteristics of a male, a female, or an intersex person. When these people are presented with two options for gender, male or female, which should they choose and why?

Which brings us back to people who identify as transgender. Is their gender male or female or something else?

Your question is explicitly about sexual orientation, so we do not need to answer most of the difficult questions within gender identity, but it is related to sexual orientation, so when choosing the language for your website, you must be aware of the basic issues of gender identity.

How to allow your users to enter their sexual orientation

If your goal is to allow your users to describe their sexual orientation exactly as each user would like to describe their sexual orientation, then the best option is to write "Sexual orientation:" and then have a text box that allows users to type anything they want to type.

Of course, if you want to sort data based on sexual orientation, you need standardized data. Allowing everyone to enter free-text will give you problems such as three people who all use the same label to describe their sexual orientation, but they typed it differently: bisexual, bi-sexual, and bi sexual. Computers are stupid, and the computer will see those three descriptions as different rather than as the same.

Therefore, you likely will want to give your users a set of options from which to choose. If we start with the belief that there are only two genders, male and female, then your best design would likely be to write, "Sexual orientation:" then have two checkboxes, male and female. Each user could choose male, female, or both.

For the overwhelming majority of websites, the above method is satisfactory, not perfect, but satisfactory. Because it assumes binary gender, it is under-inclusive, but because most people who make websites have not wrestled with the difficult and contentious issues of gender identity, for most people, trying to create standardized options other than male and female would require tremendous effort for relatively little return.

As described above, the binary gender model, however, is not particularly good. In a perfect world, the English language would have a more full vocabulary to describe gender and most people would be familiar with the options other than male and female. We do not live in that world.

The solution to the errors inherent in binary-gender descriptions and its impact on describing sexual orientation, depend on the reasons a website wants to collect sexual orientation information about its users. An easy option that is 100% inclusive of all sexual orientations is to have three check boxes: male, female, and other. "Other" is terribly imprecise, but it is more inclusive.

Without knowing why you want sexual orientation and how you will use the data, it is impossible for anyone here to give you a specific list of choices for your users.

Conclusion

  1. Neither of your proposed options are appropriate.
  2. It is essential that you clearly understand that you are asking your users for their sexual orientation and you must clearly understand the range of possibilities within sexual orientation.
  3. Gender identity cannot be separated from sexual orientation, so you will need to accept that the binary-gender model is not accurate and develop some understanding of the complexity of gender identity.
  4. Do not ask your users to label their sexual orientation. Labels include homosexual, gay, or lesbian.
  5. Do allow your users to enter the gender (or gender identity) of the persons to whom the users are sexually oriented.
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    This is actually pretty good: agree both choices are wrong. One point of biology is that in mammals it just takes a Y chromosome for a biological male, whether XY, XXY, XYY, or more complex mosaics. You're right though that the parts don't always line up, like an XY with only female parts and not understanding why she can't get pregnant. Targeting preferred gender of interest/attraction NOT self-identification is astute advice provided enough choices are allowed, like maybe; Male, Female, Both, Depends, Other, None, Dunno, Won't Say. All very tricky indeed!
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 7:39
  • I actually have every other option covered, I have options like "intersex male" which, of course, identifies masculine intersex etc etc (in fact I have about 14 geneders all-in-all and 7 sexual orientations to go with them), however, this specific subject seems to have some confusion over whether "homosexual" or "gay and lesbian" should be used. If I were to be more precise, imagine a dating site
    – Sammaye
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 8:12
  • @Sammaye You should use neither. You should simply ask what gender they prefer, if any. There are multiple sound reasons for this. The terms stop making sense with intersex or transgendered individuals, just to name one obvious issue. There are plenty more, too. Please: do like health care workers do and ask it the other way, whether by using fancy terms like androphilic, gynephilic, etc. or by using the simpler English equivalents. It is the only way to avoid the stigma and social baggage.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 8:38
  • @tchrist That is on the list, the poblem is the functionality, this is why I split out all the genders and sexaulities. I mean someone who is cis female may not want to date someone who is bigender, or even trigender (which I just call pangender in my options). But if you classify someone who is bigender as male and female not only may they feel left out but those seeking strictly females will also get incorrect results that do not match their wants.
    – Sammaye
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 9:06
  • @tchrist the other problem is that these words do make sense to those who use it. I reseached this quite a bit before coming here and I see one site in particular who makes good use of this and actually is able to represent minority dating quite well. I thnk I have advanced on that subject by simplication, i.e. two-spirit or hijra removal and concatenation into international/non-local definitions.
    – Sammaye
    Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 9:10
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Your original q was whether gay/lesbian is culturally preferable to homosexual. The brief answer is yet (but...) British organisations who campaign for equality are now using a qwertyuiop to cover all the bases: LGTBQI (you can look it up). While this is considered cutting-edge by its users, it actually excludes those of us who for reasons of age or political outlook reject one or more of these labels to describe ourselves, or who don't want to be associated with some of the sub-types in the list! A small minority do refer to themselves as homosexual, preferring this 'objective' description to words like gay, which imply a cultural standpoint at the same time. Finally, what do we do about the heterosexuals? Many of them would reject the word 'straight' as a kind of scornful dismissal. And don't forget the asexuals - some people have no libido and wonder what all the fuss is about.

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in such a dilemma over the correct usage-it would be correct to offer three options for gender identity...male/female/others.as for sexual orientation:again three options with the third option having a pull out list,including all standard options as well as the option of not specifying any one of the choices listed

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